A Fourth Grade Service Learning Project Engages English Learners
Curators notes:
The fourth grade students of Philadelphia teacher Robert Rivera-Amezola produced podcasts about water pollution and conservation as a service learning project, sharing the resulting work with their community through a portal on a school district website. In a thoughtful reflection, Rivera-Amezola describes the process, giving a vision of how participatory work can happen with students and what it means for them to contribute to their community. The interdisciplinary work of Rivera-Amezola's students took the traditional learning of the classroom and transformed it into part of the solution of a local problem.During the 2008-2009 school year, my class was involved in a service learning project. The project utilized various technologies and digital media to complete the task. These tools proved to be invaluable for the English language learners who comprised the majority of my classroom.
As my class explored many different options for a service learning project, they discovered more about themselves and built a strong community of learners. When they finally settled on water conservation and pollution, they were eager to begin. Their selection of this topic also aligned with Pennsylvania fourth grade science standards.
Podcasts as Practice and Presentation
Podcasts give English language learners a nonthreatening way to practice English.
In my experience, podcasting (like other digital modalities) often motivate English language learners to extend their new language skills as they tackle complex subjects. Working with a local not-for-profit group called “Need in Deed” that helps students apply academic skills with solving social issues, my fourth-graders decided to investigate water pollution and contamination. In the process, they conducted research, wrote scripts, and recorded audio broadcasts for publication on the Internet.
This post is part of the From the Archives: Celebrating 50 Years of NWP Teacher Resources collection.
Up next
Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners
This 2007 report by the Carnegie Foundation and the Center for Applied Linguistics identifies challenges faced by adolescent ELs in meeting grade-level academic expectations. It also provides recommendations for teacher education, educational research, school administrators and policy makers, along with instructional approaches likely to increase student achievement. The downloadable PDF would be an excellent resource for teacher-leaders designing professional development programs, developing grant proposals, doing advocacy work, and developing knowledge about teaching middle/high school ELLs.
An LGBTQIA+ Bibliography for High-School Teachers
This short list of LGBTQIA+ books can be used when selecting texts to read as a teacher-inquiry group or to use with students in a high-school classroom. Annotated descriptions are included for each book along with other suggested book pairings.
Writing Project Teachers as Writers and Bloggers
This article highlights NWP teacher-consultants who use blogs as a tool for inquiry and reflection and as a way to converse with a community of educators about their classrooms, their pedagogy, and educational reform. Teachers reading this piece can see the myriad purposes of creating a blog, and also receive tips on how to begin. This article could be used during a summer institute or school-year professional development series to support and inspire teacher and student blogging.
Also Recommended
See all
Leaning Toward Light: A Conversation with Tess Taylor
This episode of NWP Radio features a conversation with Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, and the editor of Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them.
Leading a Make Cycle in CLMOOC
A resource created to support the coaching of “Make Cycles” that were part of a professional learning offered by NWP called Connected Learning Massive Open Online Collaboration.
On "digiship"
Chad Sansing explores the concept of “Digiship” in this classroom and supports his students in using everyday technologies and materials to rapidly prototype, share, and reiterate solutions to the problems and opportunities they see around them and in their own lives.